The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection

WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here

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Second Aristh:

--- Quote from: Serack on July 10, 2016, 03:33:39 PM ---I missed this.  I would have had to have pulled out what I wanted from any transcript anyways, and this way I did it from the actual video as I watched it.  I am liberal with my editing pen when it comes to clarity and such (like the Lord Raith section, where they call him Papa Raith, and I just edited it to Lord Raith for consistency of terms in the compilation.)

--- End quote ---
Ten pages later, I'm done.  I'll make a new topic shortly.

Second Aristh:
Hi Serack, here's the notable WoJ from 5//30/14 Seattle, WA Q&A


In Book 5 when Harry gets hit with the Barabbas Curse and Shiro takes it for him so he doesn’t die, what stops Nicodemus from just doing the Barabbas Curse on Harry again?
It takes a while to set it up and get going.  You can’t just whip it out and say here’s a curse.  There’s got to be blood sacrifice and ritual and all this other stuff that goes along with it.  Otherwise he’d just use it every day, for fun.  That guy cut me off in traffic.  Barabbas Curse.  Because he totally would.


You’ve introduced a couple characters that wear different faces and show up, and it’s not always easy to tell that they’re the same person such as Odin/Vadderung/Kringle.  Are there other characters that you haven’t yet revealed that are wearing multiple faces that we have already seen multiple times?
I’m shocked that you would suspect such a thing of me sir!  *I’m not gonna tell you*
Those are pretty much scattered all over the Dresden Files cosmos.  You’ll see more as we go.  There are a lot of characters that are there right now that aren’t who you think they are.  We’ll have to see how it turns out, though.

When a wizard uses cold magic, where does the excess heat go?
Engineering or physics?  In this case it would be going over to the NN.  If it’s not actual fire happening, the NN is my go to for anything that doesn’t quite fit.

What would happen if Harry wore an iron earring?
It would do horrible things to the mantle around him and put him in terrible pain.
In several books he’s been pierced with iron and it seems as if the mantle goes away but doesn’t actually.  He’s in incredible pain because he’s been beaten up, but with long term exposure would his back go back to being normal?
Well, somebody asked something similar a couple of nights ago.  They pointed out that when Harry crossed Mab and Mab took the mantle away from him when he broke Winter Law that his back collapsed too, but his back didn’t collapse when he got pierced by iron.  And I looked at him, and I said, “You’re right.  That seems like an inconsistency.  Like someone is lying or doesn’t understand the exact
situation of things or something like that.”  Then I said to him what I said to you, next question.


Why did Harry shout his entire Name to an Outsider, especially when he knows all the Outsiders act as one?  Now this Outsider has his Name. 
Yeah, why would he do that?  Harry was shouting a challenge to it, and basically he has to respond in kind so he could find out who this thing was.  It was worth it to him to make that effort.  It does seem a little crazy, but on the other hand he doesn’t always make the best decisions. 
Consequences of stupidity?
Well yeah.  On the other hand nobody broke into his brain and tried to make him do things either.  Huh, that seems like an inconsistency doesn’t it?

We’ve seen specialists in earth magic, water magic, fire magic, spirit, ectomancy, necromancy, etc.  But we’ve never seen an air magic specialist.  Is there a reason for that or is there someone I’m not thinking of and what would that look like?
Luccio kind of is, but she lost most of her awesome mojo when she got switched into a new body.  Basically the air magic folks, depending on how much magical muscle they have, they can do a lot of things with wind.  They’re also really good at communication type stuff.  The Merlin is a fantastic air mage.  That’s the basis of his “I can communicate with everybody at the speed of thought.  Now everyone shut up, and let’s get this plan together.”  That’s kind of where that comes from for him.


Back in Dead Beat when we see Quintus Cassius pop up again where he’s aged to an old man because he gave up his coin.  Why did he never summon it back?
He tried.  The knights got the Coin secured before he could do it.  They wrap it up and take it back to the basilica.  They’ve got special holy lunchboxes for them. 


I was wondering if it was intentional that Butters’s catch phrase “Polka will never die” is P.W.N.D. which really seems to fit Butters. 
I’m shocked you would think that of me...  I’m doubly shocked that somebody noticed. 


Uriel gets very upset when Harry tries to change his name.  Is Harry’s ability to name things something that every mortal possesses or is something giving Harry naming rights?
No giving things names is something anybody can do.  It sticks a little harder coming from Harry because he has so much more power relative to the rest of the world.  Naming things is a way of having power over them.  That’s in almost every magical tradition.  That’s something that other people can do as well, but a lot of them don’t.  The problem is when you Name something you create a link to it.  By doing that you’re leaving yourself open to it in some ways.  Dresden just runs around naming things willy nilly because he’s such a careful guy.

What sets the cadence of your Name?  How does that work?
When somebody uses your Name against you, it’s all about the way you perceive yourself in some ways.  The True Name that they need is the Name that you say when you say your Name.  Nobody else can give them your True Name unless they’ve gotten it from you.

From Summer Knight, there’s a wizard sitting under the polar ice caps.  What’s he doing and is he still there?
Yes he’s still there… oh yes he is still there!  I’m doing something… I’m sorry it’s a short story thing.  I don’t want to say anything else about it.

Why the Winter Court for the ones who are protecting against the Outsiders?
What determines the realm of Faerie is it’s all the NN that’s actually bordering on the mortal world.  Anywhere you can get to in the NN from the mortal world is Faerie somewhere because that’s the border territory.  Faeries themselves are beings that essentially have a tie to the mortal world.  They’re part mortal, all of them.  The world needed protection.  Over the years it’s changed who that’s provided that protection.  Thousands of years ago when there were a bunch of other gods and pantheons in operation, it was different people who were in charge of making sure the world stays secure.  Then over the past thousand years or so, it’s fallen upon the Queens of Faerie who are the only beings with enough power to pull it off.   Of them, the ones that you want fighting all the time absolutely ruthlessly absolutely without mercy, those are the ones who have to stand up against the Outsiders, that’s the Winter Court.  When the Faerie queens were established, they were established with a safeguard built in.  That’s the Summer Court so that Winter never turned inward. 

Will we see Mrs. Murphy again?
Maybe?  Maybe.  We’ll have to see.  That might work out.

You came up with a plan for all 20+ books before you even started writing the first one.  Is that correct?
That’s not true.  I had written two chapters.  ;D
How much of that has changed since you wrote the first book?
Not a word, I’m scared to change it.
But Mouse came in out of nowhere.
Sure.  New characters have to come in all the time.  Plus Harry needed a better security system at home anyway.

Why is Harry such a dick to Marcone?
Marcone is a paternalistic authority figure, and Harry can’t help it.

Toot Toot seems to be getting more powerful as of late.  Is pizza some kind of spiritual nutrient that we’re not aware of?  What makes him keep getting bigger and bigger?
He keeps getting bigger and bigger.  You’ll notice his Name keeps getting longer.

Harry had to promise Bob a new skull, and the Fallen are bound to 30 silver coins.  Is there any resemblance between the skull Bob sits in and the coins?  Is there anything shenanigan-wise might ever happen with the Fallen and their vessels being separated?
Well, there’s never been a peer-reviewed study to prove that.  When I’m building magic in the Dresden Files, I wanted magic to make sense.  I didn’t want magic that was randomly weird and be known by randomly weird people.  I wanted it to have actual rules that it had to follow.  You’re looking at parallel structures.  In as much as that goes, you’re on track.

For the different Courts, we’ve got Summer and Winter.  Was there ever or will there ever be Autumn and Spring?
No, those don’t exist as such.  There’s groups of beings that are sort of like that in Wyldfae.  The Wyld is the largest part of Faerie by far.  So there are groups that can assemble that.  Certainly I want there to be the freedom for people to do stuff like that for their games because everybody should get to have fun.  That’s the whole point of these stories for people to have fun.  There’s not a structure as such in cannon.  Those are just transitional states between two extremes. 

For the different big bads that you’ve introduced and what not, which one would you find the most terrifying out of all of them?
They’re all creepy as hell.  The one I’d least like to deal with is Marcone.  He’s one of those smart ruthless don’t let anything stop them types.  He’s not too proud to just kill you.  He’s never going to make an evil overlord mistake because it would never occur to him to make an evil overlord mistake. 

If you know a child’s Name, can you use it on them as an adult?
Probably not.  Not unless they haven’t changed since then.  People are screwy like that.  Unfortunately that works in real life too.  I don’t respond nearly as well when people walk up to me and say, hey Jimmy Dan.  That’s not a Name that I really respond to any more unless it’s Julie saying it.

How did Harry’s dad get Harry’s mom?
At the end of the day, he was a good man.  She needed somebody she could depend on.  Big things get changed because there happened to be the right person in the right place at the right time.

How much does Ebenezer know about Thomas?
Ebenezer knows way too much about Thomas.
Do you ever see a sort of multi-generational family reunion showing up in any of the books?
Sure why not?  I’m sure there will be a nice cookout.  Everybody will get along, and they’ll sing some songs.  They can have it during Peace Talks so that’ll be perfect.

Serack:
Transcript provided by redditor blue_shadow_

2015 Stockholm Q&A

Q: Can you tell us something about your new upcoming series, the steampunk series?
A: The new series is a steampunk series. I wanted to call it a steam opera, but my editor told me, "No Jim, you're not allowed to make up brand new genres." I'm like, "OK, fine, whatever, it can be steampunk." But it'll be coming out this fall; it's called The Cinder Spires. The first book is called The Aeronaut's Windlass. The setting is a world where the surface of the world is a very dangerous place to live and so most of humanity lives in these enormous nearly indestructible black towers called "the Spires". All trade and travel and commerce and diplomacy is accomplished by airship between the spires, and two of the more powerful ones are beginning to position themselves to go to war with each other.
And the monarch of one of the spires, the Spirearch, has decided that he needs to assemble a mission team to get jobs done for him in order to get his spire positioned as advantageously as possible. So the story is kind of...I like to say it's X-Men meets Hornblower, but that didn't sound very steampunky, so now I say it's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen meets Hornblower. I would like to tell you that you'll like it because there are good characters that I really enjoyed making or that you'll like it because it's really tightly paced, because even though I'm writing something that is a little bit more like Codex Alera, I tried to pace it like a Dresden Files book - kinda compress all the action into a small area. And I'd like to tell you that you'll think it's a cool story world, but really, what's going to sell the books is that there are talking cats.
And the cats, they don't speak human languages, of course - they speak "Cat". They understand human languages, except when they don't. But they sort of exist alongside humanity, they don't like to mix too much with humanity because humans keep trying to feed kittens, and then kittens become dependant on humans and don't learn to kill things for themselves - and that's BAD. And humans - you kinda have to get along with humans though, because they have opposable thumbs...and matches! So the cats wind up being kinda like this little fuzzy mafia. "I notice your warehouse is rodent free. Perhaps you would like it to continue being rodent free. Perhaps there will be cream waiting every Thursday at three p.m."
One of the cats has a pet human, so the Spirarch recruits her to be part of his team because somebody who can understand cats and who knows how to approach them and talk to them is very handy, because cats see and hear everything and they get everywhere, and they're completely silent, and so they're a fantastic source of information.
Another one of the members of the team is a down-on-his-luck privateer, a captain, who was successful enough in his privateering at the end of the Spires that they actually sent a battlecruiser out to kill him. He manages to survive, and get away and come home. But his ship's all busted up, and though he doesn't really care for the Spirearch at all, the Spirearch is willing to fix his ship, and he can't say "no" to that.
There's basically a princess of the Spire, a daughter of the most powerful house there. One of the warriorborn - about 3% of the population in this world is born slightly different than the rest of humanity, with a much higher metabolism, and much stronger and much faster. If you get in a fight and your side has warriorborn, and their side doesn't...you win. So you gotta have a warriorborn along so another one doesn't come tromp you. There's an etherialist which is - there's crystal technology that does a lot of the airship stuff, along with the more primitive steam technology, and there's etheric engineers that run all of the machines that are based on the crystal technology, and there's etherealists who sorta do everything the engineers do, only without that troublesome "machine" part in the middle. You know, they just sorta "get to it" at the end. As a result, they're a little bit off...an etherialist who's walking around and bumping into walls and talking to people who aren't there - he's probably safe. He's probably okay. It's the etherealist that's looking at you calmly and inviting you to tea that you have to worry about - there's something definitely, deeply wrong with that one. You definitely want the guy that's a little bit weird on your team and not the calm one.
I had a great time writing it; I had a stronger response from my beta readers for this book than I have for anything else I've done. It's the longest book I've ever written. It checks in at almost 200,000 words. It's a nice, big, thick read, so we'll see how it goes. I'm so sick of it now because I've been editing it over and over for the past several weeks, but eventually the characters will be like "Jim, we have to do another story" and I'll be like "Shut up! I'm trying to write Harry Dresden!" But that'll be out late September, early October.
Q: Cool, I think a lot of us will be excited to read that then. What, if any, tease can you give us for Peace Talks?
A: Peace Talks is all about the various signatories of the Unseelie Accords are having a convocation in Chicago to try and work out a way to settle down all the discord that's been happening due to the Fomor seizing power in the vacuum left behind by the Red Court. So, I believe what's going to happen is they're all going to get together, they'll have a nice dinner, they'll hash things out, and then have a coupla beers and sing some songs, and everything will be FINE. Cause, you know, I want to surprise everybody. Everybody's just looking for it to explode, and so on. This book is only set a couple of months after the end of the previous one [Skin Game], so, you know, Murphy's still undergoing surgeries and so on to get fixed because when you get hurt like that, it takes a long time to get better. When you're not some kind of superhuman, "I work for Queen Mab", living punching bag... Let's see, we'll get to see a lot of, more of Harry and Maggie; Mouse will be in this one, we'll get to see the White Council getting involved with things again, so we'll have them on stage.
And I'm going to get to do a bunch of fights I've been longing to write since i first started writing this series, so that's going to be fun. And we will have a good time with that book as well - as soon as it's written, which, I have to stop doing things like going to Sweden and stay home and write books. It's really a good thing I'm kind of a hobbit at heart because, you know, bad things can happen to you when you go on adventures...there can be trolls and dragons and things like that. Stay home on the couch, that's not going to happen! And earlier I'd said that, and Kitty said "Yeah, but if you stay home on the couch, nothing good happens either!" And I'm like, "Speak for yourself! I've got a series to do! That's important stuff to me."
I've also got to do a few more Dresden short stories. I'm going to have to do "Harry Dresden does jury duty", and I gotta assume that the lawyers ran out of people they could strike, and that Harry was left. I got called to jury duty myself, and I had a book due, so I really hated wasting the time. So I'm sitting here like this the entire time [arms crossed, leaned back, serious look on face], the lawyer takes one look at me, and goes, "Huh-huh - no." Like that. I'm like, "That's right, judgmental long hair - you don't know which way that guy's going to break."
But let's see, we'll do the story of Molly's first job as Winter Lady, and you'll actually get to see what her job is, what the Winter Lady's supposed to do, and what Maeve was not doing. Molly's got, like, 150 years of backlog to clear before she can even catch up. Let's see, I think I'm finally going to write the Hawaii story, where Murphy and Kincaid go to Hawaii. And there's volcanoes and shark gods and everything, so that'll be fun. What else? Oh, sometime probably next year, I'm going to be writing a series, at least a few books, that are going to be young adult books when Maggie Dresden goes to school. Maggie is...she's going to be going to St. Mark's Academy for the Gifted and Talented, which has been mentioned in some of the short stories. Dresden walks in and says "It's too bad you're not St. Mark's Academy for the Resourceful and Talented, because then you'd be "SMART". And as it is, you're just "SMAGT." " So, that's the school where all the scions, the offspring of supernatural beings who live around Chicago - that's where they go to class, because it's kind of been declared neutral territory. And the law is, the kids have to sort out their own problems. So Maggie's going to be winding up going there, she's got terrible social anxiety issues because she's had [sing-song voice] some trauma. Unless she has Mouse along, and Mouse is kind of her "people-person", he's the face man. Unless, of course, things are on fire, and people are bleeding and screaming, at which point, she's completely normal...because she's Harry Dresden's daughter. But that'll be really fun to write, and we're going to end that at middle school, so we'll see how that works out.
But okay, so that's my work for the near future, so now you guys know what I'm doing - I'll be on my couch.

Second Aristh:
Part 1 from this video.

When are we going to get some mermaids in Dresden?
Probably not until the BAT because wizards don’t like to go on the ocean unless they’re desperate.

Is Harry going to allow Bob any role in raising the new spirit baby?
No, Harry is going to have that Dad with shotgun talk with Bob.

On the difference between wizards and muggles in the DV
You’ve got to be born with a certain amount of talent to be able to touch magic at all.  Sometimes that talent is greater and sometimes it’s lesser, but you’ve got to have one particular gene that flips the switch that says, yes weird.  Once you’ve got that, you’ve got to be in a position where you can develop that talent.  Be in a position where you have the intelligence and the focus and the drive to make something of it.  It’s just like any other talent, actually.  Some people are born with a really great genetic setup to play basketball.  That doesn’t necessarily make them Michael Jordan.  Not only do they have to have the gift, they have to be in the situation.  If you were born with the awesome basketball gene spread and you happen to be born Inuit, probably you aren’t going to be able to express that.  You aren’t going to have the chance to work on it. 
I always built magic in the DV as something that was a talent like any other.  You can be born with a certain amount of talent, but that doesn’t make you a wizard without a lot of hard work as well.   Conversely, you could be born without a really awesome spread of talent, and yet if you work hard enough you could really make something of yourself.
Most people can use at least a little magic.  Most people could probably be dangerous in the DV if they had enough training and worked on it for years and years.  There’s only a few who are born ready to go to the NBA draft.  Of those people, that’s who you see on the White Council.  Those who were born with that and then who developed them as well. 


And Part 2 from this video.

How do you come up with names for people/places/things?
Mostly I look at the meaning of the name.  I have a giant book of names and their meanings.  I generally try and find something that is either appropriate to the character for the name or completely inappropriate to the character for the name.  One of the two.  I have the guy who is the professional traitor and name him Fidelias which means faithful. 

Will we ever get into who keeps letting the Coins loose?
Kind of, but at the same time it’s sort of necessary for them to be out in the world.  They’re not designed to be kept in a vault somewhere and locked up.  It’s very difficult for anyone to guard them for example.   The coins do the One Ring thing to them until they get loose.  They’ve been spread out in all kinds of different places.  The best you can do is to pick a guy who you hope is as close as incorruptible as humanly possible and leave him in charge.

How much of Hannah’s magic was her as opposed to Lasciel?
Much of it was Lasciel.  Hannah was basically providing the muscle, and Lasciel was providing the direction.  She was way better than she would have been otherwise without Lasciel there advising her. 

On which Fallen was the whisperer in Changes
You’ve probably gotten all the answer you’re gonna get as far as that goes, as far as which Fallen said that.  I’m not saying Lasciel lied about everything because she could have, but Lasciel was the one with an axe to grind.

Second Aristh:
Seattle Q&A October 2015 from this video

Here's some new WoJ and a couple for the Cinder Spires as well.


Are there supernatural people who can do spaceflight?
It would not be beyond the realm of possibility for a wizard to open a Way that gets them to the moon eventually.  On the other hand, there’s not a whole lot of reason to go to space when you can get pretty much anything you want here.  Space is just mostly just space.  If they want some of that they can always go into the NN and make whatever they want.  That’s one of those things that the old powerful wizards have.   Most of them have a demesne in the NN where they can retreat to when they feel like. 


Why doesn’t Harry open a Way to block bullets/spells/etc?
He’s done that when he’s had some rock falling on him before.  The problem with doing that is one it’s hard and takes a lot of energy.  So there’s usually a more efficient way to do something about it.  The other is that whatever’s charging through could always potentially get back out again.  The other problem is what if he opens it to a part of the NN that’s filled with chlorine gas?  You don’t really know what’s on the other side until you open the door and look.  Sometimes surprise Narnia.  Other times it’ll be Boom your Jokey Smurf moment.  That’s the main reason.  It’s so unpredictable that he’ll rely on fundamentals more than anything else.  That’s something he would try if he was really desperate and just didn’t have another option.  Of course if you’re in the NN you’ll be turning the thing loose who knows where in the real world.  That’s also another issue.  If it were that easy, it would be too simple of a solution, and that’s no fun.

On silkweaver silk and harvesting it
The silkweavers, they sort of weave these giant interwoven sails out of silk.  They’re actually airborne most of the time flying around.  As you get closer to the edges of the sails, the silk gets older and staler.  That’s where you can go in and harvest it because it’s not still alive.  The silkweavers generally don’t care if you go and snip off the parts of the web that are dead and carry it away to use for sails and whatnot.  On the other hand if they’re (a) hungry or (b) you choose the wrong part of the web to come after, they’ll come at you to kill you.  It’s why ethersilk is so expensive because people keep dying when they try to go get some.  You can’t domesticate them.  The only place to get them is out in the wild where there’s giant silkweaver colonies floating around and harvesting it there.

Why doorknobs?
The first house we rented, the front door had a doorknob that was tricky.  It was clever, crafty.  For some reason, I was the only one in the family that had issues opening the doorknob.  I don’t know if I was turning it the wrong direction compared to everybody else or what, but sometimes the door would open and sometimes it wouldn’t, but usually I would not be slowing down.  So I would occasionally get bruises on my cheek or cuts on myself because I hadn’t handled the new doorknob technology sufficiently well.  As I was thinking of stuff for the etherialists, that was the first thing I thought of for Ferrus.  What if all doorknobs were that evil?  That would make life so uncertain. 

On White Court vampires and soulgazes with a bit on the Oblivion War
It’s not that Thomas is not human that the Forgotten Ones are not coming back, it’s because so few people are aware of them the connection is very tenuous.  And also because the people fighting in the Oblivion War go to great lengths to make sure they stay ignorant.  The lengths that Thomas goes to stay ignorant are he never does his homework, and he likes to not think about it. 
As far as the soulgaze goes, it’s going to be different from one white court vampire to another because they have differing levels of humanity going on.  Thomas is very very human.  He’s connected to the most fundamental human trait which is love.  When Mab said that if Harry died she would have gone to Thomas to talk to him about being the knight, Harry says he’s not even human.  Mab says he’s in love.  He’s human enough for me.  So that would have been a possibility.  If you get over to some of the more psychotic white court people some of the more jaded ones like Lord Raith, he doesn’t come off as very human.  He would look very different under a soulgaze.  Thomas is also someone who is continually struggling against his base nature.  He’s struggling against the Hunger.  That’s why he was presented in this moment of strength for the soulgaze.  Other vampires are perfectly content with that.  Lara has no problems with her Hunger at all.  She’s integrated with it much the same way Nicodemus is integrated with Anduriel.  It’ll be different from vampire to vampire.

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